Blog

Welcome to the winter addition of Marks’ Musing

It is that time of year when a number of you have been contacting the office to find out when you should bring in your books and records for us to prepare your financial accounts and tax returns.

On the 1st of April, you should have received an email from us, requesting that you download and print the questionnaires from our web site that relate to your situation.

In the email, we notified you that one of our team would communicate with you closer to the time when they were ready to commence your work and organise for you to bring in your financial records.

We have now created a schedule for what jobs we plan to work on in various months throughout the year.

You will receive an email from us notifying you of the month we plan to start your work. If you need your accounts urgently, please contact the office and speak with Sue and explain the reason for the urgency.

Where possible, based on our capacity available, we will do our best to accommodate your request.

We believe there are 5 things that can help us to speed up the preparation of your financial accounts and tax returns;

1. Your accounting system
It is really important that you keep your accounting system up to date as you progress through the financial year.

Your bank account/s should be reconciled regularly.
If you are using Xero, this is simple, as transactions are sent to you electronically on a daily basis.

If you have a problem, call us, it is better to get it sorted sooner rather than waiting until the end of the year.

2. Your records folder.
Please ensure that all financial source documents are filed in a trusted system.

By law you need to keep all financial records for a minimum period of 7 years.

If we have not already supplied you with a client records folder, please contact the office and we can organise this for you.

Please file relevant information under the correct tabs in the records folder at the time you complete a transaction, rather than waiting to do this when we ask you to bring in your records.

If you are not certain where to file something, please call us.

3. Your Financial Checklist and Questionnaire.
This would be the most important document that you need to complete as it gives us a detailed overview of the things that we need to be aware of when preparing your accounts.

If you have not already done so, take action now and download the relevant questionnaires from our web site complete, sign then file under the first tab in your client records folder.

Even if you think all of the information required can be obtained from your accounting system, it is a New Zealand Institute of Chartered Accountants requirement that all annual accounting jobs must have a completed and signed client questionnaire as part of our workpapers.

4. Your commitment to supply missing information in a timely manner
We will commence your work once we are satisfied that all your relevant records have been received.

If we have questions while preparing your accounts, we would appreciate a timely response within 24 to 48 hours.

Replying promptly,creates efficiencies and stops the job being put down and picked up too often and therefore keeps costs from escalating.

Sometimes, circumstances dictate that you are unable to supply us with information in a timely manner.

In these cases, we will put a HOLD on the work until the missing information is able to be supplied.

We may need to reschedule the job to later in the year when we have available capacity to complete the work.

5. Our commitment to you
When you bring in your records, we commit to checking them within 48 hours of receipt and if there is anything missing we will let you know promptly.

Assuming you have supplied all of the requested information in a timely manner (within 24 to 48 Hours), we commit to completing your accounts within 15 working days from the date your work is commenced.

We would like to thank you in advance for working with us to improve our service delivery to you.

We are pleased to have you on our TEAM because we know that Together Everyone Achieves More.

Cheers
Mark